NowThis has conquered social news and is going after food videos next — and BuzzFeed and Tastemade should be worried

Group Nine Media's digital video brand NowThis is going
after the food space with a new channel called NowThis
Food.

The channel has soup brand Campbell's as its founding
sponsor.

Unlike other social food publishers however,
NowThisFood will steer clear of purely recipe-focused content,
and will instead highlight food as it relates to culture,
communities and the environment.

There's a new food-focused digital media contender on the block.

Group Nine Media's digital video brand NowThis is rolling out
NowThis Food, its latest digital video channel centered around
all things gastronomic. Except, unlike other social food
video publishers that overindex on food porn (think closeup
videos of gorgeous deserts being made at high speed), NowThis
Food is dedicated to showcasing food as it relates to culture,
communities and the environment.

"While there are tons of players in the food space, we didn’t see
any meaningful programming around food catered toward millennials
that isn’t just how you create this recipe or how do you cook
this dish," NowThis president Athan Stephanopoulos told
Business Insider. "It's not like we'll have no recipes, but our
videos will never be recipe-driven."

The plan is for NowThis Food to focus on themes that it already
knows its audience is passionate about. The publisher has
previously dabbled in videos exploring the intersection of food,
culture and society in other verticals and seen promising
results, including a recent 10-part branded series "Real,
Real Life" for soup brand Campbell's which was viewed over 50
million times.

It is no surprise then that Campbell’s has signed on
as NowThis Food's launch partner. NowThis
staffers will be producing its own
independent editorial content as well as branded
social video content on behalf of Campbell's, spanning
its portfolio of brands. These stories will explore food
news as well as food waste and sustainability — two core
initiatives of Campbell's corporate social responsibility
efforts.

"The new channel will bring NowThis’ unique and authentic
storytelling approach to life around food-related topics, and
we’re excited to contribute to this ongoing conversation around
food culture," said Yin Woon Rani, VP and Chief Consumer
Experience Officer at Campbell Soup Company. "The channel will
help share stories that demonstrate Campbell’s enterprise
commitment across each element of our real food philosophy,
with content ranging from recipe content, family moments, food
news, food waste and sustainability."

The Campbell's-NowThis Food partnership is the latest example of
marketers looking for innovative and less intrusive ways to reach
consumers. While marketers frequently run sponsored stories and
work with publications on custom content, NowThis has already
built channels from scratch with paying advertisers. Back in
July, for instance, it launched
NowThis Money in partnership with Chase to help millennials
navigate personal-finance.

The new publication is entering entering the fray to compete with
viral players like BuzzFeed's Tasty and Tastemade in the food
space, which garner millions of views for each video they
post. In the last 90 days itself, Tasty had 2.9 billion
views, Food Network had 2.6 billion views and Tastemade had 1.7
billion views on Facebook each, according to data crunched by
Tubular Labs.

"When young people, particularly millennials, think about food,
it's not just recipes," he said. "Food sustainability and waste
are topics they are thinking about a lot more too."

NowThis Food is the eleventh sub-brand under the NowThis
umbrella, and will churn out at least three videos a day on
Facebook and Instagram seven days a week. NowThis will produce 52
sponsored videos in addition to 18 custom co-branded videos
created in partnership with WPP agency Wavemaker, featuring many
Campbell products including Campbell’s Soup, Swanson, Prego, Pace
and Bolthouse.

The content will be produced by a team of three producers
dedicated to the vertical. The team will be most closely watching
for "quality" metrics like watch time and engagement, that is how
long they're watching the videos and how much they're sharing
them.

Campbell's is the founding sponsor, but the vertical could
partner with other brands in the future, said Stephanopoulos.
Rest assured, the vertical will be sticking to NowThis'
tried-and-tested playbook for creating viral, social videos:
vibrant visuals with lots of text on-screen.

"We don’t want to deviate too much," said Stephanopoulos. "It's
hard enough to build a new brand in a distribution model, and we
want people to know it's us and our DNA instinctively."

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